CHAPTER 17

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Since landing at Nellis and being assigned quarters John had felt many things. Most of them were frustration-related—he'd never been good at sitting around doing nothing, which was basically what he'd done since arrival—but there was one feeling he wasn't entirely used to, and it took him a little while to figure out what it was. He finally did, though.

He was lonely.

All his life he'd been surrounded by people—his sisters, his mom before she died, his dad before he put as much distance between himself and the older man as possible, Samantha and her family and their friends from the Academy, friends he'd made at school or specific duty stations—but other than Samantha he'd never really had any people in his life who were constant, whether by presence or thought, because he had thought about Samantha all the time (wondering where she was, if she was still with the Air Force, if she had a giant brood of kids, if she had discovered some amazing science thing that he would probably have no hope of ever understanding) during the years where they hadn't seen each other and had lost touch. Sure, there were usually hundreds of people on any base he was stationed on—he hadn't had an off-base home since the summers between years at the Academy, when he'd lived with Sam and they'd done the college thing—and even when he was in Afghanistan he'd been stationed on a pretty huge base before being sent out on a series of missions. Even McMurdo had been bustling with people, especially after what they were told was a live-action simulation gone wrong—what he now knew was the battle over Antarctica, the battle with Anubis and the Goa'uld and the Prometheus and the X-302's and SG-1 down in what became the research outpost. Not long after the battle some big negotiation started happening at McMurdo, which he now knew was the various nations involved in the Stargate program—most only by knowledge of—fighting it out over the rights to the research base where, at the time, General O'Neill had been in stasis.

Then he came to Atlantis.

Immediately he'd found a family in his team. Teyla was the calming mother figure… who could, and had on pretty much every occasion, kick his ass all the way back to the Milky way. Rodney was the quirky adopted brother type, not really belonging (in the field) but there anyway, because John wanted him there, and Elizabeth had given him that enigmatic smile of hers and said something about how she was going to order that John and Rodney be on the same team anyway so it was good he'd put McKay's name on the list of people he wanted on his team. And Ford… Ford was the hyperactive puppy, so eager to get right in the middle of the mess, sometimes creating them on his own, sometimes getting blamed for them, sometimes just walking right into a situation that, despite his enthusiasm, he was too green to fully appreciate; Ford was a green puppy with a scary amount of knowledge on explosives—he liked to blow things up, John had never seen him happier than the day he'd ordered Ford to blow the stump on the Genii homeworld with some of the extra C-4 he knew the young Lieutenant carried with him in his vest. And, of course, Elizabeth was the boss, not really a part of the official team, but she had quickly become a part of the team anyway, though her roll was more passive, her job consisting of sitting at home worrying about her people, then writing about it, then reading about it, then hearing about it, then repeating ad nausium. Then there were the others. Carson, who was, John refused to admit aloud, like his grandmother, all concern and anticdotes and strange sayings that meant nothing to John but evidently had meaning somewhere in the mish-mash of words, despite the fact that they often left John feeling like he had been thrust into a Boggle bowl, or a particularly sadistic book of Mad Libs. Radek, who was like the eccentric cousin no one really understood, who was amusing in a harmless sort of way, and often underestimated, falling into the shadow of the rest of the family—mostly Rodney, in Radek's case—and, while not quite happy with his lot in the clan, never unhappy enough to try to do anything about it. And, like any family, there were the more distant relatives, people like Miko Kusanagi, and Kate Heightmeyer, and poor Peter Grodin, and Bates and the rest of the military contingent, and the scientists, and the people who didn't fall into either category, the ones who had come as floaters, who worked in the kitchens or the laundry or did odd jobs that never would have gotten done if left up to either the military or scientific contingents of the expedition. John knew all their names, knew all their faces, and if he couldn't link the name and the face together he figured that was okay, because, really, he didn't know the names of his nieces and nephews—he'd heard that Patty had been pregnant when he left for Atlantis, and he knew Angela had two kids, though he had been so far removed from the lives of his two older sisters by the time his divorce had been finalized, two years before his transfer to McMurdo following his almost-Court-Marshal, that he didn't know if there were more than the three he knew of, or if three was it, or if Patty had lost the baby, as she had the two before it, the first to a horrible car accident that nearly cost the lives of three, Patty and her husband, Ben, as well as their unborn son, the second to a traumatic stillbirth, a girl that time, at three days shy of her due date, both before John had graduated from the Academy.

John had been the surprise baby, years after his sisters were born, entering their teens, and his mother had fallen into a pattern of depression and alcohol and suppressed anger, while his father had fallen to a pattern of alcohol and expressed rage, leaving baby John to be, largely, raised by his sisters, his sisters who, he knew, loved him dearly, but didn't understand why he lived his life the way he did. Why he didn't trust that God was looking out for him, even though he found it hard to believe in a God who would allow so much suffering and pain and war and death fill one rather small world. Why he chose to join the Air Force instead of using his brain and aptitude for math and sciences (biology and physics were his strong suits, but he had never loved them, had never loved math, until he realized that, physics and math would get him into the cockpit of a fighter jet, or a helicopter, where he could make a difference in the world so full of hate and pain and death, even the tiniest difference, because the world was too screwed up for him not to at least try) to do something worthy, like become a doctor or an accountant, something with a big pay cheque and low danger and, still help people, help the world a little bit, if that was what he wanted out of his career. Patty and Angela never understood him, John knew, and that was okay, at least while he was married to Nancy, because they had adored Nancy, especially when she was trying to convince him to leave the Air Force, and if he was married to a woman like Nancy, a nice, normal girl who worked in a bank and loved spending time with her sisters in law, then there was still hope for their brother. But then he'd gone to Afghanistan, and done more good, he believed, than he really had before, and he'd tried to not leave his people behind, and he had managed to bring the body home, which was more than would have been done if he hadn't defied orders, and when he was transferred back Stateside for the Article 32 hearing, a precursor to a General Court Marshal. His Article 32 hearing had come though saying that, yes, he had disobeyed orders, but that, considering the fact that John found Captain Holland alive but that he hadn't survived the trip home. He's survived until they got a helo—an old Russian piece of crap that took John a minute to figure out, as everything was labelled in faded and scratched Cyrillic, which he had no clue how to read, though he figured out how to get the tub in the air and to the base, though it was slow going, the engine almost died three times on him, and all his attention was focused on getting back to the base, which led to Holland bleeding out in the back on the helo mere miles from the base. The Judge his Article 32 had been heard by, and the JAG prosecutor had both agreed that, yes, he had defied orders, but that, if his original suggestion of a covert rescue had been heeded Holland would have come home alive. So he'd been given a black mark on his record, his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel, which had been in the works at the time, was off the table, and he was shunted to McMurdo, which, eventually, led him to that research outpost and to Elizabeth Weir and her request to come to the lost city of Atlantis with her.

Everyone on Atlantis was his family. He didn't know everything about the, nor them of him, but they were still his family.

John felt incredibly lonely without his rather makeshift and clearly dysfunctional family around all the time.

Even when they came back to Earth he'd still had his family around. Most of the people who mattered most to him had been just down the hall, cement instead of glass and metal and decorative stone, with key cards that were necessary to open doors instead of simple thought or, at most, a crystal to wave a hand over.

Rodney had been around, though grumpier than usual, the SGC not being up to par any longer as far as Ancient research went, and the fact that he wasn't in charge made it harder for him to order the other scientists around. Or, rather, made it harder for him to get the other scientists to do what he ordered them to do. Because they had their own work, and he was the outsider who had no place in their labs, and some of them knew him from before, before Atlantis, before a year in the midst of a war, before the things Rodney had seen and done and the experience he'd gained and the awareness of what being on a team meant; back when he'd been the ass called in a couple of times to try to save the world or whatever, who had been antagonistic and willing to abandon the lives of pivotal and loved members of the SGC in favour of expediency, who had offered unimaginative solutions to problems that couldn't be stuffed into a multiple choice question, who had been cocky and loud and annoying as hell. And, sure, John was the first to point out that Rodney was still cocky and loud and, oftentimes, annoying as hell, but Rodney was still his brother, and a reminder of the fact that, even if the SGC wasn't Atlantis, there was still a home, a family, waiting for him back in Pegasus.

Carson had been there for a few days, during the debriefing period, but he'd left the same time Elizabeth had, Elizabeth to a military transport to Washington, Carson to a civilian airport that would take him to Scotland and his family. The Scot called often, though, and John got the impression that the saying 'you can't go home again' was ringing true in the good doctor because John recognized the homesickness in Carson's voice, homesickness that had nothing to do with his mother's clapboard house or questionable food he was eating or the sheep he claimed to spend his days tending to. That homesickness had nothing to do with Scotland, but everything to do with Atlantis, with the family Carson had found there, the family that was the kind formed by time and deed and experience and loss and isolation. The people who had survived on Atlantis so far were their family.

Elizabeth had been there, almost always by his side, during the initial debriefs, but then she left for Washington and he started going on missions with Samantha and her team. He and Elizabeth spoke on the phone often, about work or about inconsequential things that they would have chatted about in her office, or the Mess, or their balcony, if they were back home.

He'd already talked to Carson since he woke up that morning. Apparently the time difference didn't mean anything to the good doctor, but John hadn't minded, because he was lonely, missing his Atlantis family, thinking a little too much about his birth family, allowing his thoughts to stray into areas that he never allowed them to—dangerous areas, like how his day didn't feel complete without seeing Elizabeth smile at least once or how it felt weird to go to sleep without their usual nightly cup of tea (they had both, as leaders of the City, given up coffee well before even the first stage of rationing began, both switching to teas, which were plentiful, both from Earth and from the Athosians and their many trading partners) or how he knew Elizabeth was going to be under a hundred times more pressure now that they were in contact with Earth because, while she had never been careless, she had never had to worry about the politics back home before when she made a command decision, and he was pretty sure that the IOA, at the very least, was going to put a quick stop to that, politics being, as far as John understood it, the reason for it's existence.

So John had welcomed the early wake-up call from Scotland, had drawn the conversation out for as long as he could, laughing at the doc's stories of his family, of the drunken debauchery—which was hard to imagine the doc engaging in, though John supposed it was possible, having never seen him outside of a work environment where everyone was pretty much on duty twenty-four-seven—he'd gotten into with his old friends since meeting up with them again, about the girls—lasses, the Carson inside John's head corrected—he'd met for the first time, or had become reacquainted with since landing in Scotland, and, of course, about the sheep, even, because apparently Carson's mother had a lot of sheep, or at least what John thought was a lot of sheep, and, well, as hard as he tried, John kept flashing to a disturbing image of Carson Beckett, MD, wearing a white hoop skirt with blonde ringlets sticking out from under a flowery bonnet, carrying a tall crook with a pink bow tied to it, like something ripped from a nursery rhyme and twisted in ways that John was sure were cause for a psych eval.

After hanging up with Carson John had called Rodney's lab, the one that had been empty since a scientist had left the SGC to work at Area 51 or something, and had been given to Rodney to use while he was on Earth. There had been no answer, so John had left a message on the voicemail, hoping Rodney thought to check the thing even as he was leaving the message. Rodney hadn't returned John's call, though, to be fair, he didn't expect the astrophysicist to, knowing the strangeness of hours Rodney was known to keep when he was working in the labs. He could wake up at dawn and work until dusk, sure, but other times he would wake at midnight, work until dusk the following day, then crash until the next morning, and, occasionally—though only when the situation warranted it—he would work around the clock, falling asleep while waiting for a simulation to run or some test results to come back, jerking awake mere minutes later, eating everything he could and drinking so much coffee that the amount of time he spent getting the coffee and rushing to the bathroom to piss it back out probably added up to at least a few hours of sleep in a bed, though John knew better than to point that out.

John thought about calling Elizabeth, but he didn't know what to say to her; being in separate states for so long had left them with annoyingly little to talk about beyond smalltalk and work, which was best not spoken about over the phone, and, while he wouldn't mind having one of the meaningless conversations about philosophy or who was hooking up with whom in which department—they always knew, or, at least, Elizabeth seemed to always know when a couple formed on Atlantis, and, for the most part, they didn't care, except for once when the couple was on the same off-world team; they'd had to do some switching of teams then, but it hadn't been anything major and no one had argued over the team-swapping. Elizabeth was, John had realized early on, very casual about dating under her command; they didn't know how long they were going to be isolated from Earth, and it was foolhardy, she'd declared, to expect a thousand people to live their lives without sex or companionship or love. John actually longed to have one of their long talks about nothing and everything, usually over a cup of tea or a meal or a game of chess, where they both let the pressure of being in command fall away, at least for a little while. But there were only so many calls to each other they could make where they did that before some pencil-pusher or overly nosy pain in the ass looked at their cell records and asked a question to someone higher up about the true extent of the relationship between the two leaders of Atlantis.

John wasn't a stupid man, nor was he an uninformed one. He'd heard all the rumours. He knew Elizabeth had to. And, sure, some of the cruder ones pissed him off, and he really hated it when people gossiped about Elizabeth or Teyla like they were whatever celebrity teen caught drinking or doing drugs or whatever, but, for the most part, the rumours were just a way for people to blow off steam, they all knew that, and he mostly ignored the gossipmongers. It was usually some distortion of the truth, the rumours that spread like freaking wildfire, but the distortion, while usually the fun part of gossip, was also the hurtful part, the part that left Teyla pouting and confused—the Athosian didn't quite grasp the concept of gossip, her people being very open and honest about everything from health to sex to war to everything in between—and Elizabeth alternately fuming and laughing hysterically—depending on her mood, and who she heard the gossip from; if it was told right to her she usually laughed, if she overheard someone else talking about it she would usually fume, then find an isolated balcony (not theirs, theirs was too close to people, to her subordinates, and she was judged enough by them as it was) and let loose on the world, the universe, the people who talked about her like she was some drug addicted pop star, the Wraith (because her nice quiet scientific expedition had become the front line in a war that had been waging for tens of thousands of years and she wasn't a General, she wasn't meant to sent troops into battle; she was there to keep peace between the scientists and the military types sent to protect them, not to help turn the scientists into military types) and everything else, sometimes going back to her father's death, sometimes just yelling about the most current hell she was going through, oftentimes switching languages with as much rapidity as she switched topics, Spanish, Japanese, Czech, two different regional Arabic dialects, fucking Goa'uld, Ancient, broken Italian, poorly accented French, swearing like a longshoreman the whole time.

Samantha, John knew, was going to spend most of her remaining time at the SGC in meetings with various SGC scientists, passing along her research, moving projects around to other labs, other departments, because, really, there wasn't much that Sam didn't take on, even though her degrees weren't as all-encompassing as she might lead people to believe. Normally John wouldn't care, would call her up, but it had been so long since they had been in the same place at the same time, and their lives were so insanely different than when they were flying missions in the Middle East, that he didn't dare interrupt Sam while she was working. She'd been calling him pretty regularly, having promised to keep an eye on Elizabeth and Rodney for him, and to keep him as in the loop as possible on the more crucial details involved in the preparing to return to Pegasus with a whole new compliment of people.

He hated being away from the thick of things, even if the thick of things was, at the moment, as dull as bartering for funding and personnel and equipment, which, it seemed, had been all Sam had been able to report for the past few days. He felt like he should be there, be by Elizabeth's side, while she did everything in her not inconsiderable powers to get Atlantis everything it could possible get in order to ensure that she didn't have to fill that morbid death log of hers, that they wouldn't have to make any more apology and condolence tapes; that they wouldn't have to make any more floods of apology and condolence tapes like they had between the siege and leaving for Earth, after the first round of tapes had already been sent and the death count had been ratcheted up, not only by their own personnel, but by Colonel Everett's people as well.

Still, he'd been in the Air Force for most of his life, and he'd been ordered to stay at Nellis until he'd completed his quals on the X-302.

So stay he would.

That didn't mean he had to like it.

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Elizabeth hadn't even closed the door to her quarters when she was pulled into a meeting with General Landry, Colonel Caldwell, and several others. The good thing about the meeting was that, if Caldwell was there, then that meant that they would be able to start back to Atlantis within a few days.

However, that was the only good thing about the meeting.

To be quite honest she was feeling like she was being drawn into an ambush, and after spending most of her time back on Earth in DC she was not feeling completely ready to deal with more people with agendas of their own. One thing about the egos on Atlantis was that they were relatively balanced out by all the other egos running around, unless you encountered McKay and his galaxy-sized ego, but in DC all the egos were clashing for dominance and she had a feeling that the egos at the SGC were going to be just as bad.

"I understand the International Committee has approved a significant increase in personnel and resources for the Atlantis mission," General Landry said.

"Now that we have a ZPM, the city can support a much larger contingent," Elizabeth nodded. It had been a hellish time in DC, and Elizabeth had been tempted to scream in the middle of many a meeting, but in the end she and General O'Neill, who had been right there with her for every meeting and had been about two steps ahead of her in the wanting to scream feeling, had emerged victorious. And neither one had lost their composure in any of the meetings, which Elizabeth and Jack had agreed was as much a victory as anything else.

"Of course a corresponding increase in military presence would also be prudent," Caldwell said. Just the sound of his voice made Elizabeth's lingering happiness that she had felt as she and Jack had left the last of the meetings they had had to attend completely disappear.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth nodded, agreeing with the nearly bald man. Increased military presence was priority one, really. As much as she wanted the expedition to be completely scientific and peaceful, the truth was that they had enemies, enemies that were not going to be just science-ed away, and the thought of attempting diplomacy was, quite frankly, laughable. She hated that violence seemed to be the only answer, but even Elizabeth Weir wasn't nearly naive enough to believe that they could just talk the Wraith out of feeding off of the human population of the Pegasus Galaxy at will. "I agree. That's why I wanted Major Sheppard to come back with me. In fact, I brought all my senior staff back. I think it's only fair that they participate in the selection process of the new personnel in their respective departments," Elizabeth said pointedly. What went unsaid was that any meeting concerning the military contingent should be put on hold until John returned from Nevada so that he could have a say in what was happening in his department.

"That's kind of what we wanted to talk to you about. In your report, you singled Major Sheppard out for a lot of credit," Landry said.

Alarm bells were going on inside Elizabeth's head, but she ignored them, deciding that she was just on edge after the week of meetings with people with multiple agendas that didn't all mesh and that she was allowing her concern over the whole Simon situation to cloud her judgement. Jack had selected Landry to take over the SGC, after all, and Elizabeth knew that Jack was one hundred percent, totally and completely on her side about all matters concerning how she ran the expedition. Elizabeth firmly believed that Jack wouldn't hire someone to run the SGC who would pull the rug out from under her at the first opportunity. "That's right," Elizabeth nodded.

Landry began gesturing with his coffee cup. "You were also candid enough to document several occasions on which you and the Major didn't exactly see eye to eye. In particular, there was an incident involving an alien nanovirus in which Major Sheppard directly disobeyed one of your orders."

Biting back a line about healthy argument from different sides leading to a more educated solution for all involved (mostly because what she and John had done during the nanovirus debacle wasn't healthy argument so much as him getting frustrated and going against her ruling) Elizabeth fixed her gaze on General Landry. "He also saved a lot of lives that day," Elizabeth said, the alarms getting louder and more difficult to ignore.

"The Major's courage and ingenuity are not in question here. His ability to follow the proper chain of command is," Landry said.

"I'm not military, General," Elizabeth pointed out.

"But you are the leader of the expedition," Caldwell shot back.

Landry knew that Caldwell was only going to make Elizabeth even more defensive, something he wanted to avoid at all costs, so he stepped in, his tone gentle and his logic sound. "You see, Doctor, from our point of view, Major Sheppard's independent nature poses a bit of a problem. If he could disobey you, he may see fit to do the same to the new commander of the military contingent on Atlantis," Landry said.

Though Jack had warned her it might happen and John had flat-out said he expected it to happen, Elizabeth honestly hadn't believed that anyone would try to replace John as the military commander of Atlantis. She had been sure that someone with a higher rank would be his second in command of the whole military—Lieutenant Ford had been a bit of a stretch, but they hadn't had as many commissioned military officers as enlisted—and that John would pick someone new to head base security since Bates still hadn't woken up and, last Elizabeth heard, Doctor Lam was thinking of calling the Tok'ra to get someone able to utilize the Goa'uld healing device to try to wake Bates from his coma. Those changes she had been expecting—Bates might never serve again, and Ford was MIA, not to mention compromised because of the enzyme, and they were running on what John called 'military lite' after the casualty count from the siege was finalized and the transfer requests were accepted. But when Jack and John had both told her that John was likely to be replaced she had shaken her head, refusing to believe that it would happen.

Apparently, though, it was happening right before her eyes.

"Excuse me? When did this happen?" Elizabeth asked, stunned.

"Of course, the decision hasn't been made yet—but we do have a candidate in mind," Landry said, glancing at Caldwell who tilted his head at Elizabeth, a cocky expression on his face.

Elizabeth internally cringed at the thought of working with Caldwell day in, day out. She and John had an uncanny ability to read each other, an ability that made their co-leadership of Atlantis as effortless as leading a massive expedition in a city no one understood in the middle of a war that had been waging for upwards of ten thousand years could be. The few encounters she had had with Caldwell, and, to be fair, Elizabeth had to admit that they were very few in number, had not been the most pleasant, nor the most productive. Even Colonel Sumner had been willing to accept her word as the final decision, at least during the brief time that he had been her second in command. She doubted Steven Caldwell would react the same way, especially not after having solo command of the Daedalus where his orders were followed without question and he didn't have to answer to anyone until he turned his reports in to the US Air Force.

Beginning to feel that she was being railroaded, Elizabeth straightened her spine and allowed her gaze to turn icy. The change was subtle, and had John been in the room he would have gotten the 'danger Will Robinson' look in his eyes that allowed everyone in sight to know what kind of mood they could expect to be dealing with from the boss. Unfortunately, without John in the room to convey in more obvious terms what her spine-straightening-icy-gaze one-two punch meant, the intimidation factor was minimal, if it, in fact, existed at all. "Atlantis has a military commander," she said firmly. She was beginning to believe that John had been sent to Nevada and that the people there had been asked to make his training as drawn out as possible to keep him away from the meeting that Elizabeth wished she could just walk out of.

"You had a military commander—Colonel Sumner," Landry said. Then, to make sure he wasn't casting any aspersions on how things on Atlantis progressed, rank-wise, from there, he added, "When he was killed, Major Sheppard correctly assumed the position until a proper replacement could be brought in."

The unspoken 'which is what is happening right now' hung in the air and Elizabeth felt that all-too-familiar need to scream coming upon her again.

"Doctor, you can't be suggesting that a mission of this importance be trusted to a Major, and one with a questionable record at that," Caldwell said, softly chuckling at the thought.

Elizabeth wasn't sure if it was the Colonel's supercilious tone, or just the fact that the Colonel had said what he had, or possibly a combination of the two, but no matter the reason, her patience was completely gone.

"Major Sheppard's record before he joined my team doesn't concern me. All I can tell you is that if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. And as for his rank, if that's not good enough for you, you're just gonna have to promote him," Elizabeth said, her voice strong and unwavering.

General Landry looked like he wanted to laugh, though, wisely, he didn't give in the impulse. "Doctor…"

Elizabeth stood up, interrupting the General. "I shouldn't have to remind you gentlemen that I continue to have the support of the President and our foreign allies," Elizabeth said. She smiled sweetly at the General. "You don't wanna fight me on this one," she said before turning and leaving the room.

Once she was far enough away from the conference room Elizabeth pulled out her cell phone and dialled a familiar number, making sure to use the direct line that, as far as she knew, only a handful of people knew.

Two rings later Elizabeth was greeted with the voice of the person she needed to talk to most in that moment. "O'Neill."

"Jack, its Elizabeth. I need a favour and I need it to happen instantaneously."

There was a brief pause and Elizabeth began to grow concerned that Jack was going to laugh at her and hang up.

But he didn't.

"What can I do?" Jack asked.

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Okay, so I've been writing this story for nearly two years now, I've been posting it for over one, and still I haven't gotten to the point where John and Elizabeth get together. Which, yes, sucks, especially since that was, literally, the first part that I wrote and then this whole thing sprouted out of that. There are still a few chapters (four or five, I think, but I can't be sure quite yet) before that happens and the rating on this story actually starts to make sense.

So, yeah, this chapter is much longer than originally intended. Mostly because, in it's first incarnation, it didn't include the whole lonely-John thing in the beginning. In fact, this is only half (actually, more like two thirds) of what I wanted Chapter 17 to be.

Carson, who was, John refused to admit aloud, like his grandmother, all concern and anticdotes and strange sayings that meant nothing to John but evidently had meaning somewhere in the mish-mash of words, despite the fact that they often left John feeling like he had been thrust into a Boggle bowl, or a particularly sadistic book of Mad Libs. This passage came from my beta, who kept telling me that she thought Carson was just like her grandmother (which coincided with my watching an episode with the audio commentary where someone, I can't remember who now, said that Carson was like an old woman). Also, it's been pointed out to me that, on occasion, I talk like I've been thrown into a Boggle bowl or a sadistic book of Mad Libs, and, well, my beta, Mel, threatened to withhold my promised birthday present of Atlantis Season 4 DVD's if I didn't include this passage and point it out to my readers. So, Mel, I've done what you ask. July 8th I expect those DVD's. The only reason you're getting off with the six day delay on my actual birthday is that the DVD's don't hit stores unitl the 8th.

So the first part of this chapter is a bit of sulking, isolated John. I've been working on a LAST MAN alternate outcome that's had me inside John's head a lot, and that style of writing kind of carried over to my later drafts of this chapter. Also, the first part explains a bit about why Rodney and Carson haven't actually appeared since the earliest chapters. I haven't forgotten about them... they're just not exactly crucial to the storyline I've built here. Still, they're John's friends, his family, and , since I felt compelled to embrace the lonely John thing, well... this is what I ended up with.

The second part is, finally, something that was actually shown in the episode, and the dialogue that you recognize, obviously, doesn't belong to me, it belongs to the brilliant writers and actors and owners and producers and everyone else associated with Atlantis, which, judging by my bank balance and the lack of John and Elizabeth storylines, does not include me. The other stuff... well, that's mine, as much as it can be. Anyway, I know, it's been a while since I did any of that, and this was supposed to be an episode extension so the fact that I hadn't had any actual episode in it for so long was getting to be a little crazy. But I had to bring Caldwell back in, and Landry, and the meeting where Elizabeth defends John's honour or whatever. But, since it never made sense to me that everyone just did what Elizabeth told them to, I brought Jack in, because together they probably have enough pull to get anything done; at the time of INTRUDER the IOA wasn't as focused on getting rid of Elizabeth, but I doubt they would have handed over the reigns to the O-5 board (O being Officers, 5 being the fifth level of promotion within commissioned ranks, the O-5 board being the panel of senior officers who approve or deny promotions to that specific level).